- Robert Giroux was born on April 8, 1914 in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. He was married to Doña Carmen Natica de Arango y del Valle and Carmen de Arango. He died on September 5, 2008 in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, USA.
- SpousesDoña Carmen Natica de Arango y del Valle(1952 - 1969) (divorced)Carmen de Arango(1952 - 1969) (divorced)
- He started out in 1940 as an editor at Harcourt, Brace & Co. He eventually became frustrated that Harcourt was becoming dominated by textbooks.
- In 1955, he left to join Farrar, Straus. By then, he had such a solid reputation in the publishing world that more than a dozen writers soon signed with Farrar, Straus. They included Flannery O'Connor, Bernard Malamud, and T.S. Eliot.
- During Giroux's 60-year career in publishing, he worked with some of the world's most famous writers, including Nobel laureates Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott.
- He was a star student at Columbia University. His classmates included Herman Wouk, Thomas Merton, and John Berryman.
- (in a 1981 lecture, commenting on how contemporary publishing had become too money-minded) Editors used to be known by their authors. Now, some of them are known by their restaurants.
- (on one of his first assignments at Harcourt, Brace - editing Edmund Wilson's "To the Finland Station") At the start of my life as an editor, I experienced the rarest and most ideal situation: a manuscript needing few or no changes. This is what every editor, and author, really wants.
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